Portside

“It is one thing for the US and Israel to spy on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal US secrets and play them back to US legislators to undermine US diplomacy,” the Wall Street Journal quoted a senior US official as saying.

In an interview with Benjamin Schwarz, the editor of The American Conservative, and an ex Rand Corporation consultant, in which he is critical of the US hegemonic role in world affairs from a conservative, not a "right" point of view. So interesting that he uses Marx to describe the actions of US Foreign Policy to dominate the world for what we call neo-liberal economic domination.

Under the slogan, "Together to pursue the revolution of rights and dignity," over 4,000 organizations from 120 countries are attending the international gathering, which takes place from March 24 to 28. Groups range a wide breadth of nations and causes, from the global peasant movement La Via Campesina to the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women to the international feminist action movement World March of Women.

Farewell to the News Dissector; Big Data Antebellum; Cables mapped; Techno-tariat; Cord cutting; Telecommunications and the Occupied Territories

In an exclusive interview with teleSUR, Julian Assange talks about why he chose Ecuador for asylum and the ongoing U.S. investigation into WikiLeaks.

In honor of International Women’s Day, Activestills (http://activestills.org/) paid tribute to more than a quarter century of anti-occupation activism by the ‘Women in Black’ group in Israel. Every Friday since 1988, the women have stood in the main squares of cities or at highway junctions with signs calling to end the Israeli occupation. Often spat at, cursed or violently harassed by passersby, they have become a symbol of persistence.

According to a new independent report from the Economic Roundtable, raising the minimum wage to $15.25 will create $5.9 billion for LA’s economy, generate 46,400 new jobs, and increase state and local tax revenue by $414 million.

Edward E. Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism details how financial speculation is baked into the American economy. Baptist explains 185 years ago, acquisition of slaves, like other "property", could be financed by mortgages; that bonds were sold to investors based on the value of those mortgages; and, securities based on enslaved human beings produced a “slave asset bubble” not unlike the 2008 financial crisis.

International and European trade union bodies are calling on the European Union to bolster action on workers’ rights and safety in Bangladesh’s garment industry. The Bangladesh government has failed to implement vital labour law reforms, and a compensation fund for victims of the Rana Plaza disaster still remains US$ 9 million short of the target.

Thousands of farmworkers went on strike in Mexico to protest low wages. The strike, the first of its kind in decades, had a wide impact, as workers blocked highways and stopped the harvest at the height of the season. Workers not only want higher wages, but their own independent union.